Tom stood in the gloomy looking guestroom of a small inn in the north of Scotland. He eyed the girl who was sitting on the rim of the bed, looking at him, and, once again, he was struck by the thought how much she reminded him of Cassiopeia.
"Where is Mum?" Grace asked, her eyes questioning.
Tom clenched his jaw. Somehow he had dreaded this question. He surely wasn't the right person to adequately tell an eleven-year-old that her mother was dead.
He suppressed a scowl. It hadn't taken him long to find Grace and Ben thanks to the Locating Charm he had put on Grace the night he had first met her. He had come looking for her as soon as he had laid Cassiopeia to rest in this deserted bedroom back home. And, of course, this bloody question concerning Cassiopeia's whereabouts had to be the first thing Grace was asking.
He exhaled slowly, carefully scanning the girl's features, trying to decide what to say.
"She won't be with us for....a while," he finally answered evasively.
Grace immediately narrowed her eyes. "Where is she? What happened to her?" Her voice was more urgent now.
"That's....difficult." Tom held her gaze.
"Then explain it to me," Grace retorted exasperatedly.
Tom pursed his lips. He suppressed the desire to just get it over with and tell her what had happened, because he strongly suspected that he probably had to be a little less blunt with a child and show a little more empathy.
Yet, even though he had faked any kind of empathy a lot in his younger years, this wasn't the same, because this time it wasn't supposed to be fake. This time it had to be real.
This time it mattered.
When he remained silent, Grace cocked her head. "When Ben apparated us away I saw these men..." She drew a deep breath. "Did....did they kill her?"
Tom looked back at her. Her eyes were searching his face, and he made up his mind. If she was only a little like him, she would want the truth and wouldn't give a damn about how he told her.
"You see, when I got to her she had been hit by a curse that was bound to kill her..." His voice was even.
"But she wasn't dead yet? So you could heal her?" Grace sounded hopeful.
Tom clenched his teeth. "Things aren't that easy, Grace."
"But Mum says you're a great wizard. Why didn't you just perform the countercurse?" The girl eyed him reproachfully.
Tom looked back at her. "As I said, things aren't that easy," he repeated. After a moment he added, "She was hit by a very dark curse, very advanced Dark Arts."
"But I thought you knew everything about the Dark Arts!"
Tom gave a short humourless laugh. "There's no such thing as a textbook about the Dark Arts with which you can just learn dark curses and countercurses. The Dark Arts are much more complex. They are endless and ever-changing. Surely that's part of their beauty, but that also makes it absolutely impossible to know every curse and even less a cure for every curse. There are lots of curses which don't even have any known countercurses." His voice trailed away.
Grace stared back at him, her eyes suddenly strangely empty. "So you let Mum die?"
Tom shifted his weight slightly. "I...she asked me to end her pain." He watched some kind of emotion flash through Grace's eyes. "And I did it. I couldn't save her."
Grace just continued to stare back at him, obviously trying to grasp what he had said. Finally she whispered, "You...," but she immediately broke off again.
Tom saw tears building up in her eyes and, suddenly, he felt strangely out of place. He watched her for a moment. Then, hesitantly, he sat down next to her and put an arm around her. He felt her bury her face in his robes, her tears slowly soaking them, and suddenly he realized that something inside him just wanted to join her in her mourning for this special person they both had lost.
And yet, he knew that as long as Grace was there, Cassiopeia wasn't entirely gone. He just had to keep her safe. He closed his eyes. He would take good care of her. He had promised it, and he would do whatever it took to keep his promise.
He didn't know how long they had been sitting there, but when Grace's sobs finally became fewer, he bent down to her and whispered into her hair, "Let's go home."